Diabetes – Can you please explain to me how sugar in urine causes weight loss?

3 Comments

1. Mike Litt says:

   May 5, 2009 at 9:53 pm

   sugar causes fat. Because it makes calories and unburned calories makes you gain weight. When u have diabetes you pancreas doesn’t work so it can not break down the sugar. and you end up ****** it out. which is also known as keytons
2. medcenman says:

   May 5, 2009 at 11:49 pm

   The other answer that called the sugar a ketone is not correct. kidney can only reabsorb certain amount of sugar. when there is too much sugar, it will not ger reabsorbed into the body. so it will stay in urine and goes out. ( as you may know, everything gets thrown out of the blood and then reabsorbs back by kidney). weight loss comes from your body not being able to use that sugar. the sugar does not go into the cells and stays in the blood so cells are starving and try to use fat instead of sugar which makes a byproduct of ketone. it only happens in type I diabetes.
3. SugarBabie says:

   May 6, 2009 at 11:05 am

   From an excellent website on diabetes…

   What is “Spilling Sugar” and How Does It Relate to Kidney Damage?

   Each person has a certain blood sugar level at which the kidneys will start pulling glucose out of the blood stream and eliminating it in the urine. The average level at which this happens is around 180 mg/dl (10 mmol/l). In fact, before blood sugar meters became common, most doctors diagnosed type 2 diabetes using a urine dip, and patients “controlled” their blood sugar by testing their urine for glucose and feeling confident they were doing well if they didn’t see any.

   However, that 180 mg/dl threshold is only an average. Individuals vary greatly in where they, personally, will spill glucose into the urine.

   Some people have forms of diabetes (particularly MODY-3) where they can spill glucose in urine at levels as low as 140 mg/dl.

   Others have forms of diabetes where glucose doesn’t appear in the urine until our blood sugar goes over 250 mg/dl.

   It is possible that there is a relationship between how much glucose appears in the urine and your risk for kidney damage, though there isn’t enough research to draw any conclusions. But if your renal threshold is unusually low, it makes sense to try to keep your blood sugar at a level low enough that you don’t spill sugar, even if you are spilling at a level your doctor tells you is “nothing to worry about.”

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   Why does spilling sugar cause weight loss?

   Some of the calories you are eating are going right back out of your body, through the urine, instead of being used by your muscle cells.

   Because you don’t have enough insulin in your body, or because of insulin resistance, your cells can’t unlock the sugar and use it. You eat, but you lose weight.

   Your cells are literally starving for glucose, even though you have too much glucose in your blood. The sugar is locked out, and can’t get into the part of the cell that burns it for fuel.

   Too much glucose becomes toxic to your body, so your kidneys have to dump it.

   This is what causes all the urinating that is so common in undiagnosed diabetes, and also in diabetics that have bad glucose control. This also causes extreme thirst too, and can lead to serious consequences, if left untreated.

   Untreated high blood sugar causes kidney damage, nerve and blood vessel damage, heart disease and eye disease, so its not a safe way to lose weight.

   This can happen in both type 1 and type 2 diabetics.

   (My grandmother’s blood sugar got high enough to spill sugar quite often, she lost a lot of weight, and went into a diabetic coma more than once. Now my mother is in the same situation. Type 2 runs on both sides of my family).